


Breathe

by glorious_spoon



Series: Tumblr/Twitter Prompt Fic [57]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Asphyxiation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:41:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25560742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Alec is still breathing, which means there's still time.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: Tumblr/Twitter Prompt Fic [57]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1313993
Comments: 18
Kudos: 315
Collections: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 11





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> For a tumblr prompt; fulfills the 'asphyxiation' square on my Hurt/Comfort Bingo card.

Magnus hears the moment when Alec’s rasping breaths take on a desperate, labored quality, would know it in any case by the way Jace staggers, swaying on his feet, going gray under his healthy tan. “Magnus—”

Magnus shakes his head sharply, shoving his awareness inward. Distantly, he’s aware of Isabelle manhandling Jace backward, the terrible sound of Alec struggling for air on the other end of the relay charm. He shuts it all out. His heart is cracking, panic thrumming through his body, but his hands remain steady as he draws the spell-forms and watches them flare and fade, one after another, in thin air. Useless. They might as well be pretty lights for all the good they’re doing Alec now, but this is a problem that Magnus can solve. Magnus is the son of a greater demon, one of the oldest and most powerful warlocks on the continent; Magnus _invented_ portal magic, and it won’t fail him now. He refuses to allow it.

“—can’t get it, Alec is fucking dying, and if he can’t I’m going to—,” Jace is saying on the edges of his awareness, and Isabelle snaps at him not to be an idiot, and Magnus—

Forces his concentration in again. Alec is still breathing. He’s still breathing, so there’s still time.

Alec has been inside the vault for six hours. Six hours, since he was dragged through a rogue portal on patrol and trapped inside a box not much larger than a coffin: a vault of stone, well sealed and well-hidden, with warlock sigils inscribed inside it. Until the last, he was able to talk, conveying information about the sigils in the crisp, businesslike tones of a seasoned shadowhunter, so different from those of the laughing young man who’d teased Magnus for bringing him breakfast in bed twelve hours before. Pancakes with strawberries, strong coffee with cream, just the way Alec liked it. He laughed, and then he pulled Magnus down into a sweetly sticky kiss.

This Alexander is not just Magnus’s husband: he’s a trained shadowhunter, a leader, a seasoned fighter who can tamp down his own fear to talk them through this. Magnus owes it to him to keep calm as well.

The relay charm was the only magic that Magnus could slip past the wards, and it’s not enough for him to break them. He doesn’t know if it was intended as a treasure vault or a cruel joke of a prison, but for practical purposes it doesn’t really matter. Alec is running out of air. If Magnus can’t find a way to get him out of there, and soon, he’ll die.

Magnus is going to find a way to get him out. He’s still got tricks up his voluminous sleeves. Ragnor had a modification on the spell for blind jumps; it rendered the portal dangerously unstable, but under the circumstances that may be workable. Will have to be workable.

“ _Magnus,_ ” he hears again, so rasping and mangled that it takes him a moment to realize that it’s Alec’s voice.

“Don’t speak, Alexander,” Magnus murmurs. His chest feels tight, constricted, as though he’s the one suffocating here. “Conserve your air.”

“I think.” Another dragging breath. “It’s too late. For that.”

“Don’t be absurd, darling.” His cheeks are wet, but he doesn’t wipe them. His hands are too busy spinning desperate spell-forms into the air, crackling with light and power. The portal begins to tunnel, sparking and flaring unsteadily, but Magnus can feel when it glances off the warding spells binding Alec in and collapses in on itself a moment later. Fine. That won’t work, but if he can—

“I love you,” Alec says in a thin, rough voice, already fading. What follows is silence, terrible and absolute. Magnus hears Jace’s anguished noise, Isabelle’s sharp curse, and he feels—blank. Disbelieving. There’s a howl of magic clawing through him, but his mind feels completely empty as the spell-forms flare uselessly. The light reflects glinting on his ring.

His ring. His wedding ring, the one he conjured—Alec wears its mate.

He can’t break the wards on the vault and he can’t open up a portal through them, but maybe he doesn’t need to. Like calls to like, and the ring Alec wears was conjured from Magnus’s own magic. It’ll answer his call. Without letting himself think of all the ways this could go horribly, gruesomely wrong, he reaches out with his mind and his magic and every bit of desperate love he can conjure and _pulls_ with all his might.

There’s a booming crack, light flaring and tearing around him, and a heavy limp form tumbles into him, sending him staggering. A moment later Jace is there, Isabelle a breath behind him to ease Magnus and Alec both to the floor. Magnus’s hands fumble for a pulse, bumping into Jace’s as he does the same before Isabelle shoves them both away. She sets her fingers at Alec’s throat, her face white and still for the five heart-stopping seconds it takes her to say, “He’s alive.”

Jace sits down hard, an explosive curse leaving his mouth. Isabelle’s fingers wrap around Alec’s wrist as Magnus lets out a shaky breath, and Jace is the one who manages to gather the self-possession to pull out his stele and rip Alec’s shirt open unceremoniously to sketch a healing rune on his chest.

Alec gasps, gulping air. His eyes open, dazed slivers of hazel that take a long moment to focus. Magnus grips his shoulders, his arms, everything he can reach. His hands are shaking, magic sparking fitfully against the inside of his skin. Sigils float in thin air above them, but he can’t find the concentration to dispel them. He can’t find the concentration to do anything other than cling to Alec.

“Jace, Izzy,” Alec rasps. “Magnus, Magnus.” Magnus breathes in, then out, and realizes that he’s still crying only when Alec reaches up clumsily to touch his wet cheeks. “You’re here.” There’s a faint flicker of a smile. “ _I’m_ here.”

“You asshole,” Isabelle says weakly, stroking her fingers through Alec’s grimy, sweat-damp hair.

“You’re not funny,” Jace growls, but his hand is still resting on Alec’s chest as if he can’t let go of that evidence of life just yet.

Magnus laughs wetly all the same as he turns to press a kiss to Alec’s palm. “I’m here,” he says. “We’re here. We’ve got you.”


End file.
